


We Can’t Fall Any Further, We Cannot Reach Any Higher

by marmota_b



Series: Choruk'la Kajir [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Force-sensitive Kir Kanos, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmota_b/pseuds/marmota_b
Summary: Kir Kanos just wanted to stay away from galactic events for a change. He got his wish by getting stranded in a pre-industrial world. Of course, he was eventually dragged back into the thick of things anyway, courtesy of both Princess Aravis’ old friend Lasaraleen and her ideas, and a certain Dark Lady who could not let sleeping dogs lie.Corran Horn could have happily lived the rest of his life without Force Visions, but the Force had other ideas. Kir Kanos was not dead, and Corran and his friends had to find him.Boba Fett had a job. Job parameters sometimes change, though, especially when the employer decides to take matters into their own hands. Boba Fett was in this strange land to get Kir Kanos, alive. He would be getting Kir Kanos, alive, though job parameters had changed.Sometimes, the smallest Being can be the linchpin that changes everything, and Myrtledove, the smallest of her Mole family, arguably ended up being exactly that.I.e.: Dimension-travel shenanigans that result in something of a fluffier AU for Star Wars Legends. Because a universe that has “Wars” in its very title can definitely use it...
Series: Choruk'la Kajir [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1908958
Comments: 11
Kudos: 7





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/gifts), [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/gifts).



> Here it comes, the thing that was supposed to be my NFE 2020 entry and majorly got away from me and sparked a whole new AU and series-in-progress... It's still not finished, far from it in fact, but at least the beginning is, and I promised myself I'd have it done by the end of the year; so I figured starting to publish what I already have would be a good way to force myself to work on it... we'll see how that goes. :P  
> I will probably also continue adding tags as I go, because right now I'm kind of drawing a blank on what would be the best tags to use with the plot I've got...
> 
> There was a lot of reading the Wookieepedia involved in the plotting out of this tale and AU, and quite a lot of the Wikipedic Effect taking me to strange places...  
> As I said, it got away from me. A lot. I suspect it will be around the length of an actual Narnia book when finished. Oops! The characters who demanded to be included all have to get their say, and the plot that plotted itself out needs all the details filled in...  
> Enjoy the ride?
> 
> The title is taken from the U2 song “Ordinary Love” which I stumbled upon the same week the assignments were sent out and this story pretty much usurped my thoughts. While there was originally no correlation, I kept returning to the song and it pretty much usurped my music listening. And then a couple days later it and the story suddenly clicked together.
> 
> Warnings: Nothing too bad, I hope. Some mentions of possibly questionable food (we’re talking Beasts and a galaxy far, far away, after all). And some (mostly) canon-compliant mentions of the Dark Side and its various practitioners (when I say canon, I don't mean current Canon). Which can be a big warning, in its own right, but I hope it's not bad the way I'm dealing with it, because I'm not one for dark stories.  
> Which is why there are Wes Janson, Garik Loran & Kettch among the characters. ;-)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

No one is quite sure exactly how long ago or how far away, especially because time and space are rather famously – relative. Time can move strangely between places, and as some people could tell you, sometimes there can be an entire world inside a wardrobe.

An indeterminate time ago, in one of many galaxies, on one of many planets. This one orbited a duo of stars, was covered in deserts, and was known as Tatooine.

On said planet, there was a city (at least in Tatooine terms it was considered a city, although people from less backwater planets closer to the galaxy's Core might call it just a town) named Mos Eisley. And in the city of Mos Eisley, there was a cantina. It did not differ much from any other cantinas in Mos Eisley: it was fairly crowded, filled with odd lights and shadows, and with the clanking of glasses, the hum of the voices of many species, and music.

In a booth halfway from the main entrance, strategically facing both the entrance to their left, the bar in front of them, and the barely visible back door to their right, sat two people who were ever so slightly set apart from their surroundings, by something in their bearing: one human male and one... creature.

The human, who was nursing a glass of Corellian brandy (or, rather, Tatooine’s cheap equivalent, a regrettable choice), was fairly tall, well-proportioned though somewhat wiry in his build, and wore a hooded robe. The cut of that piece of clothing, in combination with the barely visible metallic cylinder at his belt also marked him out as someone not quite one with the seedy environment.

His companion, pointy-snouted and covered in velvety black fur, was so small they had to sit on the table. They had a glass of non-alcoholic jawa juice in front of them, and were contentedly munching on the contents of a large bowl of fried and spiced local bugs and worms. The human occasionally snuck his hand in and crunched on a snack of the odd selection himself.

“He’s taking his time,” the furry being remarked, sounding a little worried. “At least I can’t sense him anywhere near.”

“He’ll be here on time,” the knight replied. “He has a reputation to uphold. He’d have already let us know if he wasn’t going to make it.”

It was another ten or fifteen minutes until the front door opened and in walked a figure that had them both straightening their backs in anticipation. They were not the only people in the establishment with that reaction. Theirs, however, came _before_ the man entered.

“Oooh, here we go,” the furry creature said softly.

The newcomer, clad in a gray flightsuit and Mandalorian armour with chipped paint done mostly in shades of green, was probably well-known throughout the galaxy, certainly well-known in all of its seedier corners. He had taken one look around the cantina and immediately spotted the duo in the booth. He bought a drink at the bar and walked with his glass towards them.

He sat down in the corner of their seat so that he could face them but still keep command of the whole room. He acknowledged them with a nod. The knight returned it. The furry being waved at him in greeting.

“Up front,” the bounty hunter said, “your order can’t afford me.”

The knight flipped a piece of flimsi in his fingers and laid it down on the table between them.

“This change your mind?”

The bounty hunter looked at the flimsi and then up from it to the knight’s face.

“When do we start?”


	2. Sleeping Akin to Beasts

**Chapter 1**

**Sleeping Akin to Beasts**

**(Narnia, 6 years after the Battle of Anvard)**

It started as a loud screeching sound of uncertain origins, quickly followed by the crash of broken branches and a powerful thud into the ground, the soil around them reverberating under the painful impact.

The children shrieked.

“Lion gracious, what was that?!” Lindendell cried out and hugged the smallest to herself protectively. Myrtledove, of course, protested that treatment, because she resented always being the smallest, and not even such strange happenings could quench her spirit for long.

At first, though, only Thistledown dared emerge aboveground, and so it was him who first caught a glimpse of the large, metallic, bird-like structure crushed and half-buried into the soil, and the Son of Adam who had fallen to the ground about ten feet from it.

Thistledown ran to him, and noticed the man was bleeding from his right arm. He seemed to have instinctually protected his head with that arm, even though he was also wearing a helmet. He was now yanking the helmet off, struggling to rise and looking around himself in confusion.

“Come help!” Thistledown shouted for the rest of his family, because he would certainly need help with tending the poor soul. Sons of Adam were always on the larger side and this one was definitely a grown adult. “Do not trouble yourself, sir, we will see to that arm of yours at once.”

“Arm---?” the man said, and only then seemed to notice his own injury. “Oh.”

As Lindendell emerged and gasped, Thistledown told her:

“Dearest, your eyes are better than mine, you can treat him better.”

And to one of his older sons, now that the children had ventured out behind their mother:

“Clovedeep, bring some water and bandages!”

The man who had found himself so unceremoniously thrown into their lives was, though he did not know it, perhaps lucky to have crash-landed where he had: that is, in a clearing littered with Mole-hills. He was certainly lucky not to have crashed into a tree. And had he landed elsewhere, his hard-edged face bisected by a nasty scar might have made a very different first impression on some other peaceful woodland creatures that could see it more clearly.

As it were, though, this family’s first impression, after the first glimpse of him as someone injured, was that of a man running back to the metallic structure which was now starting to spout fire, shouting for (as they eventually realised) his friend, and at them to try and douse the flames, _not with water_ , before any of the Trees catch fire.

They were Moles. Soil was always at hand.

He managed to extricate his friend out of the crumpled metal just in time. As the man backed away, dragging the friend with him, and collapsed on the ground again, his sleeves and the edges of his cloak were already smouldering from the flames he had had to push through. His friend suddenly sprouted... something... and shot a misty substance at the man that both doused the smouldering cloth, and forced the man to cough. The friend looked very strange indeed; but Moles rarely bother themselves too much with appearances and there were more pressing things to worry about.

The friend warbled at the man.

“It would not help if you burnt yourself,” he replied to them, wearily.

“Don’t you worry none,” Myrtledove told him in a hopefully cheerful voice, trying valiantly to sound as reassuring as she knew her father to be. It took some effort; it was the largest fire she’d ever seen and she could feel the heat even here where her mother had commanded her to stay away from the fire.

“Mum and Dad will have it done in no time, and then we can take care of you. Do you like worm pie? We’re having worm pie for supper.”

“I’ll take whatever you’re willing to offer,” he said, in a rather shaky voice.

“We have lots,” she assured him, even though she secretly regretted the loss of seconds.

He smiled, she was sure. She could already tell that expression on humans: Lord Peridan smiled often, when he came to visit. This man’s smile did not look quite as nice as Lord Peridan’s; she could not put her paw on why. But she did not let it bother her too much, because the smile was definitely in his voice when he said:

“I hope I won’t be intruding on your hospitality too much, and that it is all right for humans to eat.”

“Well,” she considered, “most humans don’t seem to like it. But Lord Peridan always has some and says it’s very nice and very…” she pondered the big word she never could say properly and settled on a different one, “- filling.”

He gave a short bark of laughter, and she was certain there was another of those grown-up jokes she did not understand behind it. That was not fair, but it probably wasn’t his fault. She was resolved to like him because someone who had run into a fire to save a friend could not be a bad person and probably did deserve her worm pie seconds.

Moles are efficient with soil. The fire was, indeed, soon put out, and the parents could now also turn their attention fully to their unexpected guests. The man explained to them that Deefore – that was his friend’s name – was an astromech droid (whatever that was) and would not have any worm pie. Myrtledove had already figured out as much, really; Deefore _felt_ different.

The man’s own name was Kenix Kil. It did not sound anything like any other human names they knew, but then who knew how they named people where he was from – wherever that was. There was little consistency in human names, except perhaps for the way Archenlanders sometimes named their sons.

Lindendell sent Myrtledove for a plate of food for Kil and then proceeded to bandage his wounded arm. He insisted it was not serious. She pointed out to him that mere scratches did not bleed quite so much and that he should not underestimate any wounds, and he seemed so genuinely confused that she climbed up his good arm and checked his head.

It seemed it was alright, but just in case, she ordered him to sit up next to one of the Trees, Cersis, a gentle Redbud friend of theirs who could keep an eye on him while Lindendell saw to it that none of her family had suffered from the fire and checked with Thistledown which of their burrows had suffered from the crash.

* * *

Truth be told, the worm pie, while dubious in appearance, was positively delicious. Kir Kanos had already eaten many a worse thing in his life – ration bars swallowed in haste, raw meat forced down in hiding from pursuit, bugs on their own... This had not just the worm meat but also flaky pastry, what was probably cream and eggs, some sort of vegetable, and salt and spices, and after a year of eking out a living in the far reaches of the Outer Rim and Unknown Regions, it felt like the height of luxury, reminiscent of his time with the D’Astas – not even Imperial Guardsmen ate so well on a regular basis. That impression of a fancy meal was only heightened by the fact that what for the Moles had to be a large plate, for him was just a small dessert plate, which he could easily balance in the air in one hand.

And whoever the Lord Peridan the little Mole had mentioned was (presumably a local nobleman) he actually may have been telling the literal truth when he’d said the pie was _filling_.

Whoever these _Moles_ were, they were living the good life, a charmed life.

It was dawning on him that it was also a very low-tech life, and that he was stranded. He had wished to stay away from galactic events. He was clearly getting his wish in a most spectacular fashion.

The world he found himself on, it turned out quite soon, was not only low-tech, but also populated by some creatures even stranger than the Moles, a fact Kanos was alerted to when the tree above him suddenly spoke.

“Thank you for taking us Trees into consideration.”

Kanos jumped in surprise and dropped the plate. Fortunately he’d already finished the pie and the plate was wooden and did not break.

“My apologies,” the tree said – it really was the _tree_ speaking. It had a female-sounding voice, though deep like a large wooden wind instrument, and when Kanos looked up at it, he realised it also had a rather feminine humanoid face, though surrounded by branches full of heart-shaped leaves. He had heard stories of sentient beings that resembled trees. He had always thought them to be just tall tales.

“I should have realised there would be no Talking Trees where you come from,” she said. “My name is Cersis.”

For several moment Kanos only gaped at her.

“Kil. Kenix Kil,” he finally managed.

He’d given them that name, the name he’d been introducing himself with for years. The name he intended to keep – Kir Kanos was dead.

Even though it was not quite as easy to forget that was who he was, in his own mind.

“So I have heard. What brings you to our neck of the woods, Kil?”

“I’d like to hear that myself,” the first of the Moles – the pale-coloured adult he thought was named Thistledown – said.

Slowly, with many side explanations, he related to them his story – or at least the relevant parts: delving into his whole history would do him no favours. No, just the relevant parts: The experimental hyperspace lane through the Unknown Regions, the singularity that had pulled him from hyperspace and above this world, so devoid of any technology his snubfighter could pick up on, the collision with – he was still not sure what.

The fact that he firmly intended to live and let live (with reservations for particularly abominable wrong-doers like child-killers, he had to admit when they asked what he meant by that), and stay out of trouble. That part was important.

When he was finally finished, night was closing in. The adults in the group started wondering what should be done with him and Deefore.

“We should send for Lord Peridan. Sons of Adam should be with Sons of Adam,” Cersis said sagely. “You cannot feed him on Mole diet all the time. And those wounds of his should be looked at by someone with the eye for it.”

Kanos had originally dismissed his wound, but he had to concede that in the absence of bacta – his own medpack, he realised, had been in the section of his X-Wing that had suffered the greatest fire damage – or even any of its inferior substitutes, he would much prefer to have it treated by more expert hands.

“But it’s so far away!” Thistledown said.

“Not for Trees,” Cersis replied. “We can pass on the message. The Beeches stretch far.”

“Do, please,” Lindendell begged.

The leaves and branches of the trees around them began whispering, as if a breeze had picked up, though Kil could not feel the air moving. This, he realised in wonder, must be the private language of Trees, or at least some part of it.

“Consider it done,” Cersis said. “You can rest easy now. I will watch over Kil.”

“Will you be alright at night? Should we bring you some blankets maybe?” Lindendell asked him.

“Do you have any big enough for me?” he wondered.

“Well, no.”

“Don’t worry about me, then; my cloak will suffice.”

It certainly would not be the first time it had to.

They wished him good night in their pleasant high yet earthy voices and disappeared into their underground burrow.

He settled down between Cersis’ roots – she assured him she was used to it from various travelling beasts – taking care to lie on his left side and keep his injured arm safe. She moved her roots slightly – and a very odd sight it was – to accommodate him better, since, as she said, he was “a bit larger than usual.”

“Do you want me to tell you a story?”

“Story?” he asked, confused, and then laughed and added: “It’s been a long time since I was the age for bedtime stories.”

“How old are you, then?” she asked.

“Thirty-six... Thirty-seven... thereabouts.”

“Not a sapling anymore,” she chuckled.

“No. Not for a long time.”

“Then perhaps I can tell you a story for fully-growns,” she said, and after a couple moments she asked: “Do you know the history of the Stone Table?”

“I know none of the stories of your world.”

“Of course,” she said, slightly embarrassed. “Well, then, let me instead tell you how Aslan created Narnia...”

Her voice lulled him to sleep. He was vaguely aware of her protective and gentle yet solid presence even with his eyes closed and while the words blurred. He was not sure if what he saw playing out in his mind was mental images subconsciously induced by her story, a fully-fledged dream, or some sort of vision.

A vision of a great golden feline, shining with Light, and pulling many beings to their feet.

* * *

He woke up early, cold and cramped, and thus not quite rested. He was now feeling the lack of bacta keenly; his arm was aching and throbbing, although, when he took a careful peek under the bandage, it seemed, thankfully, clean of infection. The bandage would need changing anyway, though.

“Good morning,” he said to Cersis, suddenly self-consciously aware of how odd and unfamiliar it was to wake up curled up next to a living being like that. Last time he had slept close to someone had been a couple hours of snatched sleep next to Mirith Sinn, almost three years ago; before that... before that on Yinchorr, next to Lemet Tauk.

After Tauk’s death, he had been a Royal Guard, and had always had a right to a bunk of his own. That whole memory _hurt_.

Neither of those experiences had prepared him for waking up next to a _Tree_ , anyway.

Cersis only hummed in response, but Deefore tweeted at him, and Kanos rubbed his face and said:

“Good morning to you, too.”

He was not really in the habit of treating his droid like a person as some other people did, though in his solitary existence he had certainly led conversations with him before. He was beginning to suspect that, stranded as he was now, that would change. It already was changing. That familiar trill of binary and that silver dome of the droid’s shell already seemed like a welcome touch of home in a foreign land, despite the fact that _home_ had long been elusive.

Or maybe not. Maybe in the past couple of years, home had been the X-Wing, and R2-D4 therefore certainly had been part of it. Maybe that was the reason Kanos had asked the D’Astas to get him his X-Wing and Deefore back, after Boba Fett’s “invitation” to Devian’s stronghold and all the subsequent mad-dash events had forced him to leave them behind. It had certainly felt _right_ to have them back, the X-Wing now no longer a means of studying an enemy but a part of him, and if still anything to do with Luke Skywalker, then a relieved admission that their differences did not matter to him anymore.

He turned his attention to the ruins of that tentative home. The starfighter itself was unfortunately a definite write-off. In other circumstances, it may have still been salvageable, with lots of work and spare parts, but on this world, spare parts were clearly unavailable and any work therefore just a waste of time.

Many other individual objects, however, seemed to have survived both the crash and the fire. To his immense relief, one of them was the mobile solar charger: that took care of Deefore’s needs. In addition to the unexpected sentimental connection, the astromech and his databanks were now his only link to civilisation, his only proof in this forested, pre-industrial land that his life experiences were valid and true.

The charger would also take care of his blaster energy packs. That was no less a relief: he hated being vulnerable; it was bad enough that his small hosts certainly were. It would be a poor repayment of their hospitality if he proved nothing but a liability in danger.

Next order of business: food and drink. His water bottle had cracked in the crash. He did find three ration bars that were only lightly scorched. Still, if he could find anything else to eat around here, and the pie last night had been more than promising, he’d much prefer to save those for emergencies.

His catalogising of the damage and salvage was interrupted by the sound of – was it hooves? It proved to be so. Into the clearing rode a human man on a brown-coloured equine, leading another, grey one, by the reins.

“Good morning,” the man said, dismounted, and led both the horses towards Kanos.

He was of a height with Kanos, a pleasant fact after the small Moles and the tall Tree, and similarly leanly muscled, though much of his figure was obscured by the loose belted tunic he was wearing. He had a sheathed sword at his left side – an honest-to-goodness long, straight blade, with a rather ornate yet well-worn hilt and crossguard that suggested perhaps an heirloom – and a similarly sheathed dagger or knife at his right side. Kanos saw no particular danger in his approach; those weapons were simply the man’s low-tech versions of the ordinary carry blaster you could see on many beings in the Outer Rim.

He had short dark hair and brown eyes, aquiline nose, and a tan shade to his skin that may have been an inborn trait and may have been simply the result of spending time in the sun – it was hard to say with his features. He was, Kanos guessed, about as old as him or a little younger, although that, too, was rather hard to tell with his features, at once young and very mature. His face was open and friendly, but his eyes were shrewd, despite the obvious differences in appearance somehow reminiscent of Leia Organa-Solo, and Kanos concluded that the man was almost certainly no fool.

“My name is Peridan. I am here to take a look at your arm. And to see what we can do about you,” the man said as he bound his horses to a bush and turned to Kanos.

“Kenix Kil,” Kanos said, and then belatedly recognised the man’s name from the conversations the day before. “ _Lord_ Peridan?”

“That would be me, yes,” the lord said. “I assume this is Deefore?”

Deefore replied with a trill.

“Ah. This will be somewhat more complicated, I’m afraid I cannot understand,” Lord Peridan observed.

“He simply said ‘Yes’. I think,” Kanos explained.

Lord Peridan nodded and reached into one saddlebag for a bottle and washed his hands with a clear liquid with the unmistakable scent of alcohol. From what he had seen so far, Kanos frankly would not have expected _that_ degree of medical knowledge on such a wayward world. Nor would he have expected that degree of medical knowledge from someone who was not a medic.

“Do you not have medics for this?” he asked in surprise.

“Not as such, no,” Lord Peridan replied as he expertly removed the bandage and checked the wound. “At least not any who would be available right now and know enough about humans. I do know what I am doing.”

“I can see that, I was merely wondering...”

“About a lord who can do this?” the man shrugged. “I’d be a fool not to learn anything that can help my people, Mr Kil. And one does not always have the luxury of a medic.”

Kanos nodded numbly. That he did know all too well. But even on a backwater world, it still surprised him that a lord would have that experience as well and apply himself to rectifying the situation.

“It looks clean and safe. Lindendell knows what’s what, too. How does it feel?”

“I definitely feel it, but I’ll take that as a good sign.”

“Yes, I suppose at this point it is. Well, I’ll change the bandage. I would like you to go with me to my house so that I can keep an eye on it. You should definitely go easy on that arm for a while – stretch your muscles too much and it will pull on the wound and re-open it.”

“You do not mind putting me up?” Kanos asked while Peridan suited action to words and re-bound his arm with fresh bandages. “I’m afraid I cannot repay you; I do not know what currency this world uses but it’s bound to be different from what I have, and – and most of my things perished in the fire.”

“Will you mind me putting you to work in exchange?” Lord Peridan shrugged. “Obviously nothing strenuous, so maybe some help in the kitchen for now. If you want to stay beyond that, we can discuss further options when it comes to it. Did you say _this world_? You come from a different one, then. I thought so.”

“And you would trust a complete stranger like me?”

Peridan’s keen dark eyes were focused on his face now. Kanos could almost _taste_ the lord’s consideration.

_Nothing to see here_ , he thought. _Just a stranded traveller. It’s not even a lie._

The man’s mouth quirked, as if he could hear his thoughts.

“I was a complete stranger once. Welcome to Narnia, Kenix Kil,” he said and offered him his hand.

Kanos took it, wondering what the kriff he was getting himself into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Under the night sky we sleep, akin to beasts.”  
> It’s also from a song. A pretty obscure Czech song, [“Podobni zvěři”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU43BsC1ldU) (“Akin to Beasts”, “Alike to Animals”) by the band of the same name, based on a poem (or maybe two poems) by Géza Včelička. I found it in a tangent while searching for something else... I think in part it sprang to mind also because another line in it goes “The stars are looking on with gleaming eyes,” and that’s a very Narnian mental image, isn’t it?
> 
> Kanos’ age is 100% a guesstimate. I don’t think it says anywhere how long exactly he’d been in the Imperial Guard, either. So I went with a lower estimate for it, with him being a bit older than Luke and Leia but not by much. So the Empire would basically be everything he ever knew.


	3. Time Is Rolling Lazily and the Dam Is Giving Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kir Kanos is finding his footing in Narnia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it’s obvious this story did not get finished by the end of last year. Far from it. I am nonetheless really glad it did not, because a lot of things crystallised into much better things in the meantime. Peridan was originally intended to play a smaller role in this story. But his standard-bearing self went “Do you really think I would stay out of the action?” at me, and then a lot of plot things I still wasn’t sure how to approach finally began falling into place.  
> So it will be a more slow update than I planned on, also because Real Life keeps interfering, but I think overall the story will be better for it. Proper worldbuilding takes time.
> 
> Warning: For Kir Kanos working through his traumas and hangups. I mean, I don't think there's anything too explicitly disturbing and he's working on good will here; but also I write in a very POV-centric way so... you have to read between the lines a bit and I can't guarantee it won't take you to bad places since Kir himself definitely was in bad places.
> 
> Also warning: Some spoilers for The Peridan Chronicles if you happen to be reading that snail of a story as well. (I realise I should put this among the warnings at the beginning.) I’m rather too inflexible in my worldbuildings and characterisations, so I’m lifting some elements wholesale from what I’ve planned out for the future of that story. Is this Peridan Methos? He might very well be; or maybe The Peridan Chronicles’ Peridan’s fictional Telmarine background is this Peridan’s actual background. In either case, they have a lot in common.
> 
> And so this chapter (and to some extent the following one), which was originally intended mostly as a whole lot of “fish out of water” Narnian exposition and a whole lot of introspection on Kil’s part - is suddenly also a bunch of Chekhov’s Guns, which is a far more exciting turn of events. Except of course I won’t tell you which is which at this juncture. ;-) Enjoy!

**Chapter 2**

**Time Is Rolling Lazily and the Dam Is Giving Way**

**(Narnia, 6-7 years after the Battle of Anvard)**

Kil swiped droplets of sweat from his forehead. The year resided firmly in its autumn part, but the sun was still powerful in the hours around noon. And even though Lord Peridan was keeping Kil on strictly easy duty in deference to his injured arm, “easy duty” during the hurried pre-winter preparations in Stormness Vast fields did not mean he did not do his share of physical work - it simply meant he did more walking and carrying of lighter loads, like bringing the workers’ lunches from the house in a large basket fitted up as a backpack, rather than digging the tubers (they called them potatoes here) and hefting up the full sacks like the other workers. The region was all hills and mountains, and in the low-tech world that the country of Narnia lay on, that meant both that basically everything in the fields had to be done by hand, and that the most sophisticated means of transport was riding a horse or a horse-drawn cart. When the work took place in one of the fields closer to the house, like right now, Kil was relegated to his own two legs.

Kil had, at first, felt it a bit of an insult to his qualifications to be sent as a helping hand into the fields. He had grown up on a farm, and had left that life behind long ago. On the other hand, though, he understood that in his current state of injury he could not be fully relied on as a man at arms, and he owed pretty much everything he currently had to Lord Peridan. So he did not feel it was his place to raise any objections. And then he found out that Lord Peridan himself was toiling away in the fields like any other worker, working possibly even harder than any other worker, and after that realisation Kil was absolutely sure it was not his place to raise any objections.

One of the things he quickly realised in his first weeks there was that Narnia was a very diverse country, possibly more so than any other place Kil had ever been in, which was saying a lot in comparison to both Coruscant and the Outer Rim. Narnia had a seemingly never-ending range of sentient species of all sizes (with a lot of them actually smaller than humans), shapes and colours. It also meant that the variety of lunches Kil was entrusted with was wide - and it took him quite some time to learn to understand which of the workers preferred which foods. The fact he was not familiar with some of the foodstuffs certainly did not help. The only beings he was fairly sure about were the dwarfs - small-statured, wiry, sturdy humanoids - who ate much the same things as humans, although they all seemed to be particularly fond of eggs and mushrooms. But some of the avians preferred solely grain-based diets while others were into insectoid meals similar to what the Moles ate; and the other mammalians were equally varied in their tastes. Some of them could get quite forceful in their complaints if he got it wrong. Centaurs in particular quickly became a terror of his supply runs just because they ate so much - and while they were not so loud in their complaints, they were capable of making extremely _pointed_ comments.

Lord Peridan himself was, in comparison, a great relief to cater to because he would eat just about anything and did not seem to mind one bit when Kil accidentally gave him something the housekeeper had not meant for him.

As he bent down again to sort through the remaining packets in the basket, Kil heard the chattering of a group of some of the smaller people behind himself, and caught his name. He turned around, fearing he’d got it wrong yet again; but this time, their chatter and their gazes seemed in fact quite friendly, if still rather intense.

“You’re the right kind of human,” one of them piped up excitedly.

“What?” he asked, completely flabbergasted by such a proclamation - whatever were they getting at?

“You’re like Lord Peridan, you turn brown, not red,” another informed him cheerfully.

His Lordship burst out laughing and Kil flinched involuntarily.

“They’re referring to a predecessor of yours,” Peridan said. “The sun did not agree with him. He did not agree with the sun. He complained that he had not signed up for this. He burned and peeled and after one season he slunk off to shadier prospects at Cair Paravel. I understand he makes a mediocre royal clerk, which is still an improvement, so hooray: all’s well that ends well.”

Kil had begun to understand that most humans here in the north of this world were fair-skinned and fair-haired (although dwarfs, in contrast, tended to have browner skin and black or bright red hair), so one such human suffering such fate when working outdoors was not too surprising. Lord Peridan with his dark hair and eyes and easily tanned skin was something of an outlier and even Kil's (in his own estimation perfectly average and boring) brown eyes had been something of a sensation among the more excitable small non-humans.

Cair Paravel, Kil already knew, was the capital, where the four kings and queens of Narnia resided.

He was rather taken aback at the open sarcasm in Lord Peridan’s recounting of events, but as it turned out...

“Good riddance, I’d say, though I certainly don’t envy Their Majesties having to deal with him,” one of the dwarfs, Rogin, said ruthlessly, and the rest of the workers nodded and bobbed their heads in agreement.

… perhaps said sarcasm was in fact still a much lighter recounting than the events warranted. Kil was very glad for his habit of keeping his thoughts to himself right now - he could have so easily started off on the wrong foot here. And then he offered: “I grew up on a farm.”

“I knew it,” Rogin said smugly. “Unlike that mealworm, you have the air of a fellow who knows the right end of a hoe from the wrong one.”

“I would not be so sure about that,” Kil said cautiously.

His Lordship grinned at him.

“You did not start your first day in the fields by complaining that the soil is dirty, so you’re definitely an improvement,” he said.

“... where did _he_ grow up?” Kil ventured to ask, his courage bolstered by the air of easy teasing Lord Peridan was exuding. He still mentally crossed all his fingers that he was not crossing a line; but he did not seem to have done so.

“Archenland,” His Lordship said. “He was the grandson of old friends of Lorna’s; but by the end, even Lorna was fed up with him.”

Lorna was the housekeeper and main cook; she often went off on a tirade but Kil had to admit that if she could put up with all the dietary requirements in this group of sentients, she had to in fact have extraordinary forbearance.

* * *

“Kil, would you mind terribly sleeping in the Hall for the time being? I think we should save the firewood as much as possible.”

It would be a mind-boggling request in any other country as heavily forested as the mountains on the southern border of Narnia. But one of Kil’s first acquaintances in Narnia was a Tree. He had learned very quickly that there was a bit more than met the eye to the forests in Narnia.

And so he only nodded and said “not at all” when Lord Peridan made that request of him a week into full-blown, snowy winter.

The Hall was the largest room in the house where theoretically banquets and balls could be held and the Lord might eat with his guests. In practice it served all kinds of purposes, including everyday meals with all the servants, because Lord Peridan was a very pragmatic individual who seemed to think that setting a room aside for special occasions was a bad use of space. Stormness Fast, his house (even though it was fortified, castle somehow seemed too generous a word, and indeed no one really used it), perched as it was between hills and mountains, did not exactly abound with spacious rooms. The Hall was by far the largest, most practical indoors space available for many activities – ranging from putting together the layers of Lorna’s patchwork quilts to _weapons practice_.

Moving Kil’s whole bed into the Hall would therefore not have been practical at all; it would be a bedroll for him now. Kil did not particularly mind. It was true that he had personally served the Emperor, with all the prestige that had come with it; but it had also come with a high degree of self-sacrifice. And he had since then, by necessity, learned to make do with very little. Combining the two habits was not a particularly difficult leap to make for him by now; and in his short time in Narnia, he had quickly learned that Lord Peridan never asked for anything without good reason.

He did not mind it if it did indeed mean the household could save on firewood. The Hall, heated by a large fireplace in the middle of each of the lengthwise walls, was being kept warm in either case; the fireplace in Kil and Deefore’s small room was actually probably too large for it and keeping the fire going there was indeed comparatively more wasteful. Kil was one of only four humans in the house, next to Lorna, the elderly cook and housekeeper, and her husband Mertel, the – well, it was hard to say what exactly Mertel’s position was called, since he did so many things, but he was definitely the head servant who made sure things around the manor got done and got done well. And Lord Peridan himself, of course. The rest of Lord Peridan’s servants all had furry and feathered coats of their own, being members of various other mammalian and avian species, so the winter cold bothered them less than the humans; besides, the majority of them lived somewhere nearby rather than in the house itself.

And then there was Deefore.

When Kil had promised his service to Lord Peridan, the man had turned to Deefore, and had asked him what he wanted to do. And Kil had felt ashamed because he had not given any thought to where did Deefore fall in all of this. Deefore was his droid, he would follow where Kil went, end of question.

But Lord Peridan had asked, and Deefore had trilled an answer, and even though the end result was the same – Deefore had followed – there was a world of difference. And it had become even more pronounced over the number of weeks they had spent in Narnia so far. Deefore was no longer relegated to regular astromech tasks, Kil did not wipe his memory because of course he wanted to retain access to every scrap of info possible, and Deefore had quickly developed a _personality_.

Kil suspected it was one the droid never would have developed had he had Kil himself for his sole companion. It was far too friendly and eager a personality for that.

“I’ll be sleeping in the Hall now,” he told the droid. “This room will get cold. I’m not sure what your ideal operational temperatures are; it probably won’t get cold enough to bother you so you could keep this room for yourself.”

Deefore responded with emphatic whistling and whirling of his dome, and demonstratively grabbed Kil’s pillow and made to follow.

“Or that. Thanks, pal,” Kil smiled at him, and Deefore warbled contentedly.

They walked through the house together, and met Lord Peridan with his arms full of blankets at the doors to the Hall.

“I’ll join you if you don’t mind,” the lord said.

Kil blinked at him.

“Not at all,” he said.

It was a surprise but – he did not mind. Sleeping in a large room together with other people was something he had not done in some time, but it was familiar and comforting, in ways he had forgotten, forgotten to allow himself to think about. That first night in the Hall, talking into the darkness, with Lord Peridan’s funny, snarky observations about some of the people who had feasted in that same room, and with Deefore’s warbles of laughter (laughter from a droid! - but there was no mistaking it for anything else), Kil fell into the soundest sleep he had experienced in years.

* * *

Thus Kil quickly found out that communal sleeping in the Hall, with its night-time conversations and the reassuring sound of another person’s breath always present, was something to like about winter in Narnia.

But he was also quickly finding out, to his growing displeasure, that one of the things to dislike about winter in Narnia was that there was a limited number of things a trained guardsman could do day by day in a snow-covered fortress at a decidedly friendly border. Because Narnia’s border with Archenland to the south really was decidedly friendly and governed largely by the two coutries’ unusually open relations. And thus there was very little for a man at arms to do.

Not that Lord Peridan was not willing to train with swords every day now that Kil was determined to get his arm back up to scratch and to prove useful in his new avocation as one of the retainers at Stormness Fast. Kil was, in his turn, teaching the lord all the unarmed combat techniques the Royal Guardsmen had been expected to learn. Peridan was a quick study, although he scoffed at all the more _performative_ aspects of many of the martial arts like Echani – something Kil was rather in agreement with. Peridan was a pragmatic individual; he understood very well that when it came to a fight outside the confines of a training salle, your opponents did not bother with the niceties. His own sword-fighting lessons reflected that mindset, too: he would teach Kil the proper forms, and then mercilessly upend his expectations in the ensuing bouts. Kil did not mind; he was used to that sort of teaching.

And yet the lessons Peridan drilled into him were very different from the lessons Kil had learned in the Squall or in the wilds of Outer Rim. In one sense, they were considerably more selfish – the main objective seemed to be to come out alive and clear of wounds, whereas the Academy at Yinchorr had always taught him that his life and health were of less import than the safety of the Emperor or the success of the mission – but simultaneously they were far more selfless: the focus was not on utterly crushing the opponent but simply on rendering them ineffective. Sometimes that would still mean delivering a killing blow. Sometimes it would not. In the context of defending Narnia and its inhabitants, sometimes convincing the opponents that they were better off as allies was the best, most desirable outcome.

But those lessons still accounted only for a fraction of the day. The necessary day-to-day business of watching out for potential trouble in the region was sufficiently covered by beings far better suited to the wintry conditions who also happened to have better hearing and sense of smell than humans. And Kil was quickly finding out that when all was said and done, the lord of the manor did not actually need him for much right now. Peridan was far less inclined than Palpatine to bring a bodyguard with him everywhere. (And yet this mere human with low-tech weaponry dealt on a daily basis with Beings he would stand no chance against – Bears for one might give even Wookies a challenge; and Kil was very grateful that Flo, the Lynx who was one of his fellow guards-persons, was a softie at heart, since a single swipe of her claw was not something to be treated lightly. Whereas Palpatine as a Sith Master could have defended himself easily even barehanded...) So for the most part Peridan went about his daily tasks unaccompanied just like the day they’d first met, and Kil’s duties continued to be quite different from what he’d once trained for. He was now mostly helping out with keeping the Hall warm and with carrying heavy loads for the kitchen and stables. But for a good number of hours in the day he was still left hanging because the household at Stormnes Fast had done just fine for many years before his arrival.

Lord Peridan had at first decided that Kil should learn to read and write in the manner of this world. But that was something Kil soon got the basics of under his belt – it turned out to be a variant of High Galactic, not so surprising in retrospect considering everyone spoke a dialect of Basic, and he was used to the necessity of absorbing new info and skills quickly. Besides, Lord Peridan was far more of a bookworm than Kil was to begin with. So the lord not only could, and did, do perfectly fine for himself whenever he needed to deal with some reading and writing; he in fact learned Aurebesh (and with it also communication with Deefore by help of Deefore’s little display screen) just as fast as Kil learned Narnia’s writing system. (Peridan still frowned at the messiness of Kil’s handwriting, though, and insisted that he write a little each day to improve on that. Kil usually did so by writing down his tasks for the day or week, even though they had a tendency to change on him unexpectedly.)

Then Kil discovered Stormness Fast’s stash of bows and crossbows and got out into the snow to train with those; but that, too, proved far too simple to occupy his undivided attention for long. Peridan, it turned out, was quite hopeless with a bow, but a more than decent shot with a crossbow. Although Kil was determined to improve his range with the former - if only to balance out his lord's shortcoming - Peridan insisted he take it easy and slow because it could still put too much strain on his arm right now.

It was the early dark and the encroaching inevitability of being stuck in one place with this unaccustomed boredom for _at least_ three months that led to Kil sitting in the Hall in the evenings and doing nothing else but closely watching Lorna at her sewing, absorbing her techniques.

It was an illuminative, contemplative thing to do for him. Lorna preferred to do her patchwork by hand, even though she did have a sewing machine – which was, just like about any other piece of fine metalwork in Narnia, of dwarf make. Even Kil’s new sword and dagger had been made by dwarfs (and both blades were by far the best he had ever had a chance to handle). Peridan’s own sword was not – Kil had learned that Peridan did not originally come from Narnia and the sword had come with him; that solidified Kil’s conclusion that the sword was an heirloom, because otherwise the pragmatic lord would have no doubt opted for the incomparable dwarf craftsmanship.

Kil had another, more personal reason to be grateful for the dwarfs’ affinity to all kinds of skilled crafts including the few examples of Narnian machinery: if Deefore happened to get damaged, Kil hoped a dwarf would be able to help repair him. Right now, though, Deefore was quite happy to trundle around the ground floor levels of the house doing simple tasks like handing Lorna her sewing shears; so the danger of damage to him was thankfully low.

It took Lorna all of two such quiet evenings to shove a needle, a spool of thread, and a stack of paper pieces and colourful fabric patches at Kil, and say:

“Give it a try.”

“I’ve never sewn anything,” Kil protested.

“That’s an oversight,” Lord Peridan remarked matter-of-factly from the other side of the table where he was doing his bookkeeping.

Knowing Lord Peridan at least as much as he did by now, Kil was not altogether surprised by that comment. Peridan definitely believed in having a well-rounded skill set. Kil also realised that his lord fully expected him to rise to the challenge, not because it was a challenge but simply because it was the prudent thing to do.

So he did give it a try.

It proved far harder than it looked to thread the needle, to catch the thread in the fabric and do so neatly, to get the needle to push through fabric exactly where you wanted, to keep your stitches and thread tension even.

He got absorbed in it, and before he knew it, Lorna was pressing him to stop for the day because it was getting late. She looked on at his startled surprise with a knowing smile.

He was, simply put, hooked.

There was the technical aspect to it, the familiar drive to get it right and master the technique, in this case to match the pieces perfectly with neat tiny stitches as quickly and smoothly as possible. But there was also the unaccustomed creativity of putting the pieces together to create a new whole, the fascinating world of possibilities that opened up before him when he looked at Lorna’s previous creations and saw how you could use endless configurations of simple shapes and colours to create patterns and pictures, to create order out of chaos, richness out of scraps, and personality out of a default template. It pleased something deep in him: the part of him that had so far rejoiced in perfectly executed plans was suddenly thriving on this boundless creativity, and could not be deterred by the fact it took time. In fact, he relished the time spent; in his situation it was just what he needed. It was strangely meditative, something he had never had the patience for before. He found meditation in itself disturbing. Instead of clearing his mind it often took him into places he preferred avoiding, completely defeating the purpose in his estimation; but when he lost himself in patchwork, it soothed his mind and yet it also had a practical, tangible result. And there was even more to it, which he was seeing all around himself: it could bring brightness, warmth and cosiness to stark stone and wood chambers and create a _home_.

Because Stormness Fast definitely was a home to these people he now lived with, and now that he was creating something more lasting that just a day’s firewood stack, he was beginning to see it that way, too.

* * *

“And you could use it for Christmas gifts,” Lorna told him one day when he was sewing and she was instead knitting, something in blue and gold wools she had promised him would be a new winter hat for him. (A month ago he would have protested the lack of tactical foresight in a colourful hat in a snowy landscape; now he was rather enjoying that splash of colour in the monotony of white and dark.)

“Christmas... gifts? What---?”

“Oh my goodness,” Lorna looked at him in shock that seemed disproportionate to a mere cultural difference. “You do not have Christmas where you come from, do you? You poor dear.”

He had observed that Lorna had strong mothering instincts. She was constantly warring between treating Lord Peridan with more deference than he ever demanded himself, and an urge to treat him like a son – which ultimately often culminated in the urge to berate him when he was doing something she perceived he should not be doing as the Lord of Stormness Vast. With Kil, she must have found it far simpler: she had almost immediately settled on treating him as a mother (or grandmother?) would. As disorienting as it often was to him to suddenly find himself fussed over as if he were twenty years younger than he really was, it also meant that he was well taken care of, which was frankly a huge comfort after he had shed and lost almost everything he had ever had to his name. At the time he’d arrived at Stormness Fast, the sum total of his material belongings had fit into one of the two saddlebags of his borrowed horse. It was still more than he had had immediately after the massacre of...

... well. That way lay most of the reasons he still sometimes woke up in cold sweat and occasionally lost track of time. But no one batted an eye at it here. Kil suspected that Peridan, being a member of a class expected to defend the land and its people in this world, almost certainly had a couple of painful memories of his own tucked away.

But Lorna’s mothering tendencies also meant she was quite happy to explain things to Kil whenever she found out he was lost. That, too, was a relief, even though Lorna’s explanations could get quite convoluted because she often had trouble understanding just _how much_ of a cultural divide lay between them. (He usually got much more concise and to-the-point explanations from His Lordship, but it did not sit well with Kil to be asking him about _everything_.)

And so they passed that particular evening with her telling him about decorated trees, about gifts, and all kinds of festive food, and spending time with your family, and Father Christmas. (He really did not understand the part about Father Christmas but kept mum about it, concluding it could wait for another time.)

The whole thing seemed a world removed from his own experiences. And, in truth, of course it was. When had he last had anyone to celebrate with? When had the Empire ever let anyone just spend time with family and friends, with no strings attached? Nearly all holidays had been public, nearly all time he had ever had had been permeated by the Empire’s presence. He had lost touch with his parents after shipping off to Yinchorr. Even before then, they had already drifted far apart, differing as they had in their views on the government. Hoping to avoid Imperial indoctrination had been the whole reason his family had moved from Coruscant to the farm on Chandrilla when he had still been little. The attempt had been in vain: the Empire had done its best to maintain its presence in all schools, and in the process of his teenage rebellion, Kir Kanos had succumbed to the Empire hook, line and sinker. Uncle Sam, now just a very vague memory of a protective presence from his childhood, had left the Core entirely first. His parents themselves had followed and vacated their Chandrilla home when Kir had been selected for the Royal Guard training. He had never heard from them again; and being what he had been then, he had not even regretted it.

He did regret it now.

Lorna could not know why he grew so sombre, but given his current situation she seemed to understand all the same, laying her hand on his in a gesture of motherly comfort.

In that moment, he determined to give her and Mertel all the respect he had failed to give his own parents.

He forced himself to smile at her, knowing full well that the mark Darth Vader had left on his face meant he could never again smile as he used to as a child.

He was suddenly realising that the Empire had done far more harm to him than he had ever given it credit for.

That evening, as they laid down on their bedrolls, Lord Peridan seemed to sense his distress, and instead of his usual amusing anecdotes launched into a hopeful story about Aslan, the Lion god who had created Narnia, and the hundred years of winter he had broken in joyous spring.

Kil did not share Peridan's beliefs, but he was grateful for the change in tone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are so many worldbuilding ideas swirling around this chapter (and to some extent the following one) and I don't have enough space or time for most of them, ugh. Writing life in Narnia from the POV of someone from the Galaxy Far Far Away was a really interesting exercise; it was interesting to look at it from the POV of someone who would not blink an eye at Talking Beasts but would be completely missing the Spare Oom conditioning of "the right kind of books". Of course, he has some conditioning of his own...  
> I'm still not really satisfied with it; it kept outbranching under my hands and going all sorts of places and it seems rather all over the place - but then maybe that's the point since Kil is also all over the place. It just still feels like there's something off and I can't put my finger on _what_...
> 
> Originally it was supposed to be one chapter with the following one! But: too much necessary character development and too much worldbuilding. That whole first section about the fields is a late addition: There had to be more observations about Narnia's population, and Kil had to work through some stuff, and my headcanon Peridan insisted on making his sarcastic side known, for Reasons.
> 
> The song from the title: “Líně se převaluje čas” by Petr Skoumal. (I'd link to a YouTube video but it seems there isn't one.) The exact quote is “Time is rolling lazily, it’s maddening, and the dam is giving way.” I dropped the middle part, in part because it would be too long and in part because it did not suit my purposes quite so well.  
> I actually don't plan on lifting all chapter titles from songs. But there are more coming that offered themselves; and like I did with this one, I'll probably go for song lines whenever a chapter title will elude me because that way usually do lie satisfactory titles. :D
> 
> ETA: That feeling that something is off? Yeah, well, one of the reasons might be that I forgot to change Uncle Sam's placeholder name before posting. So that's what he's called now. :D (Also this is exactly why I normally write such things in red...)


End file.
